Study On Rational Health Resource Allocation

The evidences from researches conducted by WHO, demonstrate that investment inpublic health is cost-effective and efficient for improving population health. However,limited health resource and unlimited demands obsessed health policy making andmanagement of China all the time. Currently, priority setting is a well acknowledgedmeasure for health resource allocation around the world, which provides a perspective toconsider the universal premise of scarce health resource in China. Thus, this study focuseson the allocation of health resource by setting priority for health investment, is an attemptto advance the fairness of Chinese health resource allocation through the way of bettergovernance, explicit priority criteria and more procedural fairness.To attain the aim of this study, this study first reviews the measures for dissolving thedilemma of supply and demand on health resource employed by foreign countries. Thefindings show that priority setting is an effective strategy that commonly used, although thestrategy is specific for the context of each country. Moreover, those strategies areinfluenced by the diverse philosophical theories, which provide a source of reference onrational allocation, equitable distribution and allocation priority. Based on the researchfindings, this study believe the fairness should be the basic principle of the priority settingin China. Such belief provides a dynamic and dialectical view on the balance and promotionof efficiency and fairness, rather than excluding other allocation factors, such as efficiency.Next, this study explores the procedural fairness on health resources priority setting byusing comparative cases study. Accountability for Reasonableness (A4R) and ParticipatoryAction Research (PAR) are used to evaluate the resource allocation procedure. The resultsillustrate the following measures should be carried out in order to perform the proceduralfairness: to set up a transparent and open health decision-making process; to empowerrelative stakeholders; to advance government decision-making capability; and to meet the political commitment of government.Then, this study discusses how to implement the priority setting on the health resourceallocation for carrying out fairness in three steps. Firstly, this study finds that the idealmodel of governance is stewardship by analyzing relative policy and cases. To attain thisideal state, promoting recommendations should comprehensively understand the historicalchange of health resource allocation governance and adopt diverse governance means.Secondly, relative measures emphasized on the elderly, the poor and other priority groupsare put forward. Thirdly, this study summarizes performance criteria such as values, ethicalprinciples etc. on setting priority of health resource allocation by reviewing relativeliterature from Pubmed and CNKI, to put forward china’s own prioritize criteria andpriority area.Finally, this study conducted two empirical studies in order to implement the prioritysetting of health resource allocation. One study analyses the relative data of health resourceof the whole country by using the Benchmark of Fairness (BF). The results demonstrate thatthe allocation policy on health resource should emphasize on: to fill the gap between urbanand rural areas; to shorten regional disparities; to strengthen the support for Western regionof China. The second study carries out a survey on the administrators’ attitudes towardpriority setting in Chongqing Municipal Health Bureau used three Likert scales. The resultsshow the preference of Chongqing Municipal Health Administrative agencies, their willingto prioritize the health resource and the foremost priority decision criteria. It finds that theytend to support the implementation of setting priority on the health resource allocation.